Purpose: As the skills economy becomes the norm, learning focused on skills, learners who understand those skills and can iterate the learners to potential employers, and hiring personnel who prioritize skills when making personnel decisions create a visible currency that can be leveraged by all the stakeholders. This paper seeks to analyze those emergent skills, show the skills' impact on the self-organizing skills ecosystem and illustrate how the skills provide a conduit to wholesale global change by creating a talent pipeline designed to generate economic vitality. Design/methodology/approach: Through a system thinking lens and by exploring related skills ecosystem literature, this paper explores the concept of the self-organizing learn-earn skills ecosystem and the role technology plays in the development, implementation and continuation of the process. Tools such as customer, actor, transformation, worldview, owner and environment (CATWOE) and levers have been implemented to probe the maturity, challenges and opportunities the emerging ecosystem provides. Findings: As the ecosystem evolves, there is much to be done to align stakeholders to reach the ecosystem's full potential. However, by applying a systems lens to the work in progress, greater clarity and definition can be achieved, thereby generating more forward momentum to propel the skills movement toward the intended outcomes. Originality/value: While there are many recent publications that define the elements, parameters and attributes of the referenced skills ecosystem, this article aggregates information, through a system thinking lens, to provide a deeper, more cohesive analysis.